Method and system for excluding recipients in an electronic communication system

ABSTRACT

A system that enables a communications system user to conveniently define entities to be excluded from receiving an electronic communication, such as an electronic mail (“email”) message. An “Exclude” user entry field is provided in a user interface to a communication system. The Exclude field accepts entry of an “exclude set” of entities to be excluded from an email message being processed or defined in a currently accessible graphical user interface window. The disclosed Exclude field is provided in a user interface window together with one or more other user entry fields available for definition and/or review of an “include set” of entities initially designated for receipt of the message. Lists and/or groups may be resolved by determining the destinations they contain either within the client computer system, within a source server computer system, and/or within a destination server computer system.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates generally to electronic communicationsystems, and more specifically to a method and system for excludingrecipients in an electronic communication system using an excludeoperation.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Today's electronic communication systems are heavily relied on tosupport a wide variety of user needs. In particular, electronic mailsoftware programs (“email”) have become ubiquitous, and are often themost practical and/or efficient mode of communication available.However, user accessible controls over entities designated for receiptof an outgoing message are limited in typical systems. The entitiesprocessed in such systems may be mailing and distribution lists,user-defined groups, individual email addresses, aliases, or otherspecific types of recipient identifiers as appropriate for the specificcommunication system. Accordingly, in the present application, lists,groups, aliases and recipients are interchangeably referred to asentities.

For example, a user of existing email client-server software, such asLotus Notes®, Microsoft Outlook Express®, Eudora®, or sendmail™, doesnot have the ability to easily exclude an entity from an ongoing orinitial communication, when using mailing lists, groups, and/orindividual addresses. For example, an email program user may desire tosend an email message to recipients listed in association with an emailalias or a mailing list for a set of users, such as “Sales Employees”,while excluding one or more entities within the list from receiving themessage. Existing systems provide no convenient mechanism foraccomplishing this objective. As a result, the user may be forced toindividually input all the entities from the list other than the one(s)they wish to exclude into the destination field for the message.Similarly, if it is desired to exclude an entity from receiving aninitial message or ongoing email thread, the current approach is tomanually search and delete the unwanted recipient address or lists fromdestination fields. This shortcoming prevents the convenient use of the“Reply All” function in situations where one or more entitiesparticipating in a communication thread are intended to be excluded froma message within the ongoing series of communications.

This problem becomes more difficult in the case of a message in whichthe only receiving entities specified are specified as lists or groups.First, there is no convenient way to determine the individual emailrecipients of the message, without some automated way to resolve thecomponent entities of each destination list on the client system.Existing systems do not operate to determine the individual addressesspecified by each destination list or group, unless the list or group islocal to the client. Moreover, even if the all destination lists and/orgroups are fully resolved, the user of the client system must thenmanually search and delete those entities desired to be excluded fromreceiving the message.

In the area of bulk email software, sometimes referred to as “spamming”tools, some recipient exclusion capabilities exist. Existing bulk emailtools provide the ability to define a recipient exclusion file separatefrom and outside the user interface for defining, addressing and sendinga specific message. Accordingly, such list definition tools are notsuitable for general email users, since the exclusion step, even for asingle message, requires list manipulation independent from the steps ofdefining and/or responding to a message. Switching to another windowwithin the user interface window to perform such list editing and/ordefinition is undesirable from a usability perspective. Moreover,separate list editing steps may be cumbersome when defining and/orresponding to individual messages, such as within a message thread usinga “Reply All” function. Editing an exclusion file for a small number ofdesired exclusions is, like manually searching and editing the contentsof message destination fields to delete individual recipients, timeconsuming and inefficient. Thus, while existing bulk email tools areuseful for batch processing of “spam” email messages, their overalldesign and user interfaces leave much to be desired for the generalemail user.

For the above reasons, it would be desirable to have a new system forcontrolling the recipients of an electronic message, such as an emailmessage. The system should allow a user to exclude recipients as easilyas it allows the user include recipients of a message.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

To address the problems described above and others, a method and systemare disclosed that enable a communications system user to convenientlydefine entities to be excluded from receiving an electroniccommunication, such as an electronic mail (“email”) message. In anillustrative embodiment, the disclosed system provides an “Exclude” userentry field in a user interface to an email system. The Exclude fieldaccepts entry of an “exclude set” of entities to be excluded from beingrecipients of an email message being processed or defined in a currentlyaccessible graphical user interface window. The disclosed Exclude fieldis provided in a user interface window together with one or more otheruser entry fields available for definition and/or review of an “includeset” of entities initially designated for receipt of the message.

The user entry fields available for definition and/or review of an“include set” may, for example, include a cc: (“carbon copy”) user entryfield, a bcc: (“blind carbon copy”) user entry field, as well as the To:user entry field. The bcc: user entry field lists addresses, groups, orlists, to which the message will be sent, but which will not be seen bythe recipients, while the contents of the cc: field will be visible toall recipients.

The disclosed system is applicable to a variety of communicationsystems, such as email and other similar methods of communication. Theentities processed using the disclosed system may be mailing anddistribution lists, user-defined groups, individual email addresses,aliases, or other specific types of recipient identifiers as appropriateto a specific communication system. In some cases, multiple recipientsare addressed by a single recipient identifier, like an email address.The specific title or image identifying the Exclude field may include atext title of “Exclude”, or provide any other textual or graphicindication of the field, as appropriate. The Exclude field may beadjacent to the fields defining the include set, or in some otherlocation within the user interface window. The disclosed systemprocesses one or more entities identifiers entered by a user into theExclude field by preventing those entities from receiving theemail/communication. Accordingly, the disclosed system may be used toexclude an individual within a group or list from receiving a message,or to exclude irrelevant users from receiving a message otherwisereceived by all recipients in an ongoing email thread in whichrecipients are replying to all users within a group using a “Reply All”email function. The disclosed system can be used to exclude anyspecified set of entities from the set of recipients.

The disclosed system provides significant advantages over the prior art.Specifically, the disclosed system enables a user to exclude recipientsfrom an ongoing discussion using email, as easily as the user can addrecipients to the ongoing discussion. The disclosed system may furtheroperate to process email groups and/or lists by resolving their contentson either the client or server side. Moreover, in contrast to bulk emailsystems designed to send large numbers of copies of a single emailmessage, the present invention automates the exclusion of entities fromindividual messages in a way that is useful to the general email user.For many users, this will translate into a) saving keystrokes, and b)eliminating the trouble of remembering all the entities on a list or ina group. The disclosed system also potentially reduces network trafficand disk space usage, since the amount of overall traffic is reducedthrough its use.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

In order to facilitate a fuller understanding of the present invention,reference is now made to the appended drawings. These drawings shouldnot be construed as limiting the present invention, but are intended tobe exemplary only.

FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating devices in an embodiment of thedisclosed system.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram representation of a screen display showing aclient email user interface for an embodiment of the disclosed system;

FIG. 3 is a flow chart illustrating operation of a source clientcomputer system an embodiment of the disclosed system; and

FIG. 4 is a flow chart illustrating operation of a source server in anembodiment of the disclosed system.

FIG. 5 is a flow chart illustrating operation of a destination server inan embodiment of the disclosed system.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF EXEMPLARY EMBODIMENTS

As shown in FIG. 1, devices in an illustrative embodiment of thedisclosed system include a source client system 1 communicably coupledto a source server system 2. The source server system 2 is communicablycoupled to a network 3, over which it communicates with a number ofdestination server systems, shown for purposes of illustration asdestination server system 4. The destination server system 4 iscommunicably coupled with some number of destination client systems,shown as destination client systems 5, 6 and 7.

The source client system 1, source server system 2, destination serversystem 4, and destination client systems 5, 6 and 7 are, for example,each computer systems having one or more processors, as well asassociated memory for storing program code executable on suchprocessors. Such computer system may be based on any appropriate anyspecific computer architecture and/or operating system, and the programcode may be provided to the processor and/or stored in the associatedmemory using any appropriate programming language and/or data format.For purposes of explanation, the source client 1 and destination clients5, 6 and 7 each execute electronic mail (“email”) client programs. Thesource server 2 executes an email server program associated with theemail client program in the source client 1, while the destinationserver 4 executes an email server program associated with the emailclient programs in the destination clients 5, 6 and 7.

As shown in FIG. 2, an embodiment of the disclosed system operates toprovide a graphical user interface (GUI) display including a messageprocessing display object or window, such as the electronic mail(“email”) client program user display 10. The email client user display10 is displayed, for example, to a user of client software in an emailclient-server software system, such as a user of the source clientsystem 1 of FIG. 1. In the embodiment of FIG. 2, the client user display10 is provided within a single window of a window based user interface,such as that may be provided by a window manager program in a windowingsystem within an operating system executing on the client computersystem. The window containing the client user display 10 may, forexample, be provided as a separate viewing area on a computer displayscreen in a system that allows multiple viewing areas as part of thegraphical user interface (GUI).

As shown in the illustrative embodiment of FIG. 2, the client userdisplay 10 is generated including a destination user entry field, shownas the To: user entry field 12, a carbon copy user entry field, shown asthe cc: user entry field 14, a blind carbon copy field, shown as thebcc: user entry field 16, an exclude user entry field, shown as theExclude: user entry field 18, a subject line user entry field, shown asthe Subject: user entry field 20, and a message definition portion,shown as the message 22 in FIG. 2.

FIG. 3 is a flow chart showing steps performed at a source clientsystem, such as the source client system 1 of FIG. 1. As shown in FIG.3, at step 30 the source client accepts the include set and exclude setas inputs from the user, for example through an interface such as shownin FIG. 2. For example, the include set consists of the entities presentin the destination, carbon copy, and blind carbon copy user entry fields12, 14, and 16 of FIG. 2. The contents of the destination, carbon copy,and blind copy fields may be explicitly entered by the user in thecurrent display window, or may be preloaded as a result of the userusing a Reply or Reply all function or other client configuration withregard to a previously received message through the email client programinterface. The exclude set consists of the entities present in theexclude user entry field, such as the Exclude: user entry field 18 ofFIG. 2. The contents of the exclude field may also be explicitly enteredby the user in the current display window, or may be preloaded as aresult of the user using a Reply or Reply all function with regard to apreviously received message through the email client program interface.The entities within the include set and the exclude set may consist ofindividual user addresses, address lists, user-defined groups,user-defined aliases, or other indications of potential recipients ofthe current message.

At step 32, the source client system resolves any unresolved entities inthe include set or exclude set that it can resolve, either locally basedon information stored in the source client system, or by contacting aremote entities processing facility. For example, a remote entitiesprocessing facility employed at step 32 could consist of an email serversoftware executing on the source server 2 of FIG. 1, or a directoryserver, or some other facility. In the exemplary embodiment, resolutionof entities in the include set or exclude set means, for example, thatidentifiers in the sets are translated into one or more email addresses,each of which having a destination server IP (Internet Protocol) addressassociated with them. Step 32 may include determining which entitieswithin the include and exclude sets indicate multiple recipients, as inthe case of a distribution list or user defined group. For suchentities, the source client system attempts to determine the individualrecipient identifiers, such as email addresses, associated with them.After the entity resolution performed at step 32, there are, forexample, entities in both the include set and the exclude set, which maybe either resolved or unresolved.

At step 34, the include set is now assigned the difference between theinclude set and the exclude set. The exclude set remains the originalexclude set. Accordingly, at step 34, the following set theorydifference operation is performed:INCLUDE SET={INCLUDE SET−EXCLUDE SET}

As a result, the include set contains all members of the include setthat do not belong to the exclude set. As will be apparent to thoseskilled in the art, the include set cannot be empty initially, while theexclude set can be empty.

At step 36, the disclosed system determines whether the include setresulting from step 34 is empty. If so, then the flow ends at step 38.Otherwise, the new include set, exclude set, and message are sent to asource server, such as the source server system 2 of FIG. 1, for furtherprocessing.

FIG. 4 is a flow chart showing steps performed by a source serversystem, such as the source server system 2 of FIG. 1, in an embodimentof the disclosed system. As shown in FIG. 4, email server softwareexecuting on the source server system accepts the message transmittedfrom the source client system, as described at step 40 of FIG. 3,together with the include and exclude sets. At step 52, the sourceserver system operates to resolve the include set and the exclude set,by resolving any unresolved entities in the include set or exclude setthat it can resolve. At step 54, the source server system may operate todetermine whether a resolution error has occurred. A resolution erroroccurs when the source server is unable to resolve all the entities inthe include and exclude sets it received to their respective destinationIP addresses. If such an error occurs, then step 54 is followed by step56, in which an error may be sent back to the source client systemstating that one or more entities could not be resolved, and processingof the message may be terminated. Otherwise, step 54 is followed by step58, at which the source server system assigns the difference between theinclude set and the exclude set to the include set. The exclude setremains unchanged. If the resulting include set is determined to beempty at step 60, then processing is completed at step 62. Otherwise,step 60 is followed by step 64, in which the disclosed system operatesto send the message to the entities in the new include set, and alsopasses along the exclude set with each message. Those skilled in the artwill recognize that the forwarded message implicitly includes therelevant include set for any given destination server, for example, amessage sent to user1 @ibm.com, user2@ibm.com and user3@xyz.com willimplicitly include {user1, user2} as the include set for destinationserver ibm.com, and {user3} as the include set for destination serverxyz.com.

FIG. 5 is a flow chart showing steps performed by an embodiment of thedisclosed system to process information received by a destination serversystem, such as the destination server 4 of FIG. 1. The destinationserver may or may not support exclusion of recipients, and the disclosedsystem can operate whether or not such exclusion is supported on thedestination server. At step 70, the destination server accepts theincoming message from the source server, which may include the excludeset. At step 72, the destination server may operate to resolve one ormore entities within the exclude set and include list that it receivedwith the message from the source server. At step 74, in the event that adifference operation on the include set and exclude set has a non-nullresult, the destination server deposits the received message to the setof entities indicated by the difference between the include set and theexclude set, for example by transmitting the message to one or moredestination clients such as the destination client systems 5, 6 and 7shown in FIG. 1. The destination server may operate as a source serversystem for messages sent to other destination server systems, forexample for messages originating the destination client systemscommunicably coupled with the destination server system. Also, thedestination server may operate as a source server for messages receivedfrom other source server systems, for example for entities in anincoming message's include set resolves into one or more recipientswhich are not within the domain of the destination server. In such acase the source server functions as a virtual source client of thedestination server.

In an example of operation of the disclosed system, a distribution listmay be defined as the ALL-Employees list, and contain 2000 individualuser entities, each consisting of an individual email address. A usermay desire to send an email message to those users within theAll-Employees list, but to exclude a particular user, identified anindividual email address John-Smith@company. The user needs to simplyenter the All-Employees list identifier into the To: user entry field 12of FIG. 2, and also enter the email address John-Smith@company into theExclude: user entry field 18, and then click on a “send” button providedby the email client software. Similarly, if the user desires to send amessage to the All-Employees list, but to exclude 80 users listed in alist identified as the Federated-Team list, the user needs simply toenter the All-Employees list identifier into the To: user entry field 12of FIG. 2, and also enter the Federated-Team list identifier into theExclude: user entry field 18, prior to clicking on a “send” buttonprovided by the email client software. Moreover, if, during a messagethread being communicated among all users listed within the All-Employeelist, the user receives a message, and wishes to send a reply excludingthe users within the Federated-Team list. The user need only use a Replyor Reply all function, and then enter the Federated-Team list identifierinto the Exclude: user entry field 18, prior to clicking on the “Send”button provided by the email client software.

FIGS. 3, 4 and 5 are flowchart illustrations of methods, apparatus(systems) and computer program products according to an embodiment ofthe invention. It will be understood that each block of the flowchartillustrations, and combinations of blocks in the flowchartillustrations, can be implemented by computer program instructions.These computer program instructions may be loaded onto a computer orother programmable data processing apparatus to produce a machine, suchthat the instructions which execute on the computer or otherprogrammable data processing apparatus create means for implementing thefunctions specified in the flowchart block or blocks. These computerprogram instructions may also be stored in a computer-readable memorythat can direct a computer or other programmable data processingapparatus to function in a particular manner, such that the instructionsstored in the computer-readable memory produce an article of manufactureincluding instruction means which implement the function specified inthe flowchart block or blocks. The computer program instructions mayalso be loaded onto a computer or other programmable data processingapparatus to cause a series of operational steps to be performed on thecomputer or other programmable apparatus to produce a computerimplemented process such that the instructions which execute on thecomputer or other programmable apparatus provide steps for implementingthe functions specified in the flowchart block or blocks.

Those skilled in the art should readily appreciate that programsdefining the functions of the present invention can be delivered to acomputer in many forms; including, but not limited to: (a) informationpermanently stored on non-writable storage media (e.g. read only memorydevices within a computer such as ROM or CD-ROM disks readable by acomputer I/O attachment); (b) information alterably stored on writablestorage media (e.g. floppy disks and hard drives); or (c) informationconveyed to a computer through communication media for example usingbaseband signaling or broadband signaling techniques, including carrierwave signaling techniques, such as over computer or telephone networksvia a modem.

While the invention is described through the above exemplaryembodiments, it will be understood by those of ordinary skill in the artthat modification to and variation of the illustrated embodiments may bemade without departing from the inventive concepts herein disclosed.Moreover, while the preferred embodiments are described in connectionwith various illustrative program command structures, one skilled in theart will recognize that the system may be embodied using a variety ofspecific command structures. Accordingly, the invention should not beviewed as limited except by the scope and spirit of the appended claims.

1. A method for processing a message for transmission, comprising:determining an include set of recipient entities, wherein saiddetermining said include set of recipient entities includes displayingat least one destination user input field within a graphical userinterface window and inputting said include set of recipient entitiesfrom said at least one destination user input field; determining anexclude set of recipient entities, wherein said determining said excludeset of recipient entities includes displaying at least one exclude userinput field within said graphical user interface window and inputtingsaid exclude set of recipient entities from said at least one excludeuser input field; assigning, by a source server system, a differencebetween said include set of recipient entities and said exclude set ofrecipient entities to a new include set of recipient entities;transmitting said new include set of recipient entities and said excludeset of recipient entities to a destination server system; determining,by said destination server system, a result of a difference operationbetween said new include set of recipient entities and said exclude setof recipient entities; and sending, by said destination server system,said message to destinations indicated by those recipient entitieswithin said result of said difference operation between said new includeset of recipient entities and said exclude set of recipient entities. 2.The method of claim 1, wherein said determining said include set ofrecipient entities further comprises displaying at least one carbon copyuser input field within said graphical user interface window andinputting at least one of said include set of recipient entities fromsaid at least one carbon copy user input field.
 3. The method of claim2, wherein said determining said include set of recipient entitiesfurther comprises displaying at least one blind carbon copy user inputfield within said graphical user interface window and inputting at leastone of said include set of recipient entities from said at least oneblind carbon copy user input field.
 4. The method of claim 1, whereinone of said recipient entities in said include set of recipient entitiescomprises a list identifier, and further comprising resolving said listidentifier in said source server system, wherein said resolving includesdetermining at least one individual address associated with said listidentifier.
 5. The method of claim 4, wherein at least one of saidrecipient entities in said exclude set of recipient entities comprises asecond list identifier, and further comprising: resolving said secondlist identifier at said destination server system, wherein saidresolving includes determining at least one individual addressassociated with said second list identifier.
 6. The method of claim 5,wherein a second one of said recipient entities in said include set ofrecipient entities comprises a third list identifier, and furthercomprising: resolving said third list identifier at said destinationserver system, wherein said resolving includes determining at least oneindividual address associated with said third list identifier.